Asma Khalid

Are there some examples from history of regional conflicts that involved major powers that could have exploded into a larger war, into a potential world war, but instead were averted?

I mean, we talk a lot about the wars that did happen, World War I, World War II, but what about the wars that didn't happen?

That's fascinating.

It is terrifying, though it's also to me, Margaret, also reassuring that in that moment, we were able to avoid that really, really dangerous and terrifying result between the USSR and the United States, right?

Is there a lesson you take away from that USSR example?

They understood it was getting too volatile and they needed to bring the temperature down.

Mutually Assured Destruction, the idea that nuclear powers would not go to war with each other.

These two nuclear superpowers.

Yeah, I mean, that's actually exactly what I wanted to ask you about, which is that after the Second World War, there were these two big theories that developed that sort of suggested we were in this post-war order.

I mean, one is, as you mentioned, mutually assured destruction, the idea that nuclear powers would not go to war with each other.

But the other was capitalist peace theory, the idea that countries that trade with each other wouldn't go to war against each other.

How much merit...

do these theories have today?

I realize that we're having this conversation in the context of Iran, because that's when I began hearing questions about, you know, are we headed towards a potential World War III, at least in the American context?

But I realize perhaps this view looks differently if you're sitting in Europe.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told my colleague Jeremy Bowen at the BBC.

That Russia's Vladimir Putin has already started World War III.

And so that makes me wonder, have we already begun a descent into a sort of global war and not realized it?

Well, I hope not.

You've written a lot about how we in the West, since World War II, sometimes act as though we kind of invented our way out of war.